


Second Grade

by ninchannie



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Boys In Love, Canon Compliant, Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff, Happy Ending, Just vaguely, M/M, Mentioned panic attack, This Is Really Very Soft, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Worry, extremely soft, finding happiness, so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24200827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninchannie/pseuds/ninchannie
Summary: These arms become his home, more than any dorm, any hotel could ever be. These fingers and knuckles and hands a steadier grip than anything drilled into the earth could make. Those eyes become safety and warmth and unconditional acceptance, and those lips become a forbidden fruit for Soobin to think of, when he’s lonely.OrHow Soobin fell in love with Yeonjun, and the time he realized that the other might have tumbled just as deep.
Relationships: Choi Soobin & Choi Yeonjun, Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 38
Kudos: 255





	Second Grade

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolutely unlike everything I usually write, but I needed it. It's just soft and good and they all end up happy and it's everything they deserve and sometimes you just need that. 
> 
> Absolutely inspired by Yeonjun and Soobin being so in love ALL THE TIME. Like how do they do it? I don't know, but here is this because of it.
> 
> Enjoy ~~

Countless people say, that love is like a flower. A plant that slowly but surely grows from root to sprout to blossom. That needs tending to by sun and water, to be nurtured by what someone else is giving. It needs help to grow.

Others say it’s like water or fire, drowning you deep or burning you whole. An all-consuming power that leaves you without a thought, without the possibility to do anything against it. You gladly let it devour you.

In a negative sense, some might even compare it to a disease. Something that comes to you and settles deep inside your being, gnaws at your guts and poisons your veins with no cure to be found on the horizon. In the end, nothing can save you.

_This night where the stars are asleep._

Soobin always thought that there is no possible definition of love. That no word or concept or metaphor can authentically enunciate the feeling.

Sometime in second grade, his class had the assignment to write five rows about what love feels like to them. He sat in front of his paper for a long time, before slowly writing down the names of his family, his friends, his teachers and even the cartoon characters he adored at the time.

In the end, he wrote seven rows and got a sad Hello Kitty sticker from his teacher, because he didn’t answer the question to her liking. Because he didn’t use a shitty metaphor like ‘ _love is like a rose in full bloom, but it also has thorns_ ’ or ‘ _love is like quicksand, the more you struggle the deeper you sink_ ’. (There’s no way, the parents didn’t help with those answers, he told himself.)

It used to upset Soobin for a long time, because even as he grew up, he never found another way to describe his love. Each year sometime in spring, he would sit down with a blank sheet of paper to try and think of one, but it always ended up the same way, with rows upon rows of names.

That is, until he meets Choi Yeonjun for the first time. Both of them are full-cheeked and bright-eyed, Soobin more so than the other, as he begins his trainee days, one year after Yeonjun.

Quickly, Soobin realizes that he doesn’t just look up to Yeonjun out of respect or in a search for guidance on their stressful journey. There’s something else between, something that flows easily and softly, out of the bounds of what they are or what they should be.

_A familiar and unfamiliar river._

Their team is formed and debut nearly in their grasp and for the first time, Soobin can’t think of anything to write down, not even names. He scrawls the same characters of that one name again and again in the few minutes he has before yet another lesson, or practice, or class. He lost plan of his schedule at this point.

When he comes back too late in the night to stay awake, but too early in the morning the get a healthy amount of sleep, he rips the paper into hundreds of tiny pieces as quietly as he can in their shared room, and stuffs them into a pair of socks deep down in his closet.

As he lays down in his bed and lets his eyes travel over the grey shadows of his future members, his friends, two eyes glisten at him from the other bottom bunk and lull him into a magical land of dreams.

_Over the ashen grey._

Everyone congratulates him. His family, his sunbaes, the managers and staff. Everyone shakes his hand with fake smiles and undemanding promises that they won’t keep.

He’s the leader. He has to make sure things work out, has to be strong in the eye of failure, has to take responsibility if something goes wrong. He has to take care of four other people that he deeply cares about, when he doesn’t even feel like he can take care of himself.

For the first time in his life, Soobin can’t keep anything inside. Not even the most expensive dinner he had in years, all in celebration for the successful future the entertainment forces to life.

He barely manages it out of the car and into the elevator, up and up and up and the pressure hurts and then he nearly doesn’t make it into the dorm. When he finally empties his stomach into the toilet, soft fingers thread through his hair to keep it out of his face. A warm smile greets him when he eventually stands up on shaky legs.

Even when his chin begins to quiver and tears flow free, Yeonjun is there to hold him through it all. To pull him into his bed and arms and hold Soobin tight. To silently bid the others to stay out of the room, so Soobin can have a few moments to calm down.

A few moments turn to minutes and minutes into hours, and for the first time in months, Soobin can sleep through a whole night without waking up and without having nightmares about losing the most important people in his life.

_Did you wait alone for me?_

These arms become his home, more than any dorm, any hotel could ever be. These fingers and knuckles and hands a steadier grip than anything drilled into the earth could make. Those eyes become safety and warmth and unconditional acceptance, and those lips become a forbidden fruit for Soobin to think of, when he’s lonely.

_He is growing into his role,_ is what everyone whispers, as silent as possible, but loud enough for him to hear. _He’s doing well_ , are the words that become addicting after every evaluation.

But they only feel important when one person says them, when one person smiles an honest and true smile of _you’re okay_ , _you’re doing fine_ , _you’re alive_. It’s Soobin’s cure in what feels like an endless spiral of worries, and his kryptonite when he thinks of the question his teacher asked in second grade.

He still has no answer. Yeonjun’s name still looks wrong torn up in the back of his closet, but Soobin knows he is getting closer to it. That with everyday they are closer to reaching their dream of debut, he also gets closer to another truth.

Even though he knows it will only get more impossible from there, he allows himself the few precious moments of hope right before he falls asleep everynight, Yeonjun’s caring eyes a steady companion into darkness.

_Will all the dreams become memories?_

Soobin finds his answer, when Yeonjun’s name is revealed as the first of their group and he glows bright in the reception. He burns like cinder and glows like a phoenix and he is _bright_ , as bright as he had always been to Soobin, but now he is out in the open for everyone to see.

Everyone had expectations. The managers, the staff, the members themselves, and they get blown away by an innumerable amount of views. Messages of adoration and they have yet to really _do_ anything.

Just like before, Soobin shakes hands and accepts smiles, these now brighter, but this time he keeps the dinner inside, keeps everything inside and he feels close to bursting. But bursting from something good.

Until they get back to the dorm and Yeonjun breaks down, clawing at every last straw, at everything Soobin has to offer. Sweater, arms, thighs, it doesn’t matter when Yeonjun sinks to the ground with a heaving chest and frantic eyes and _panic_. And Soobin is the leader, Soobin takes care, so he scoops him up and keeps him warm, forces Yeonjun to breathe and stay calm.

And when their three best friends regain their posture, they come to them as well, holding Yeonjun tight, promising him that he’s fine. That just because he’s the oldest, he doesn’t have to be strong all the time.

They fall asleep huddled together and wake up with aching bones, aching hearts, but Yeonjun is smiling. Puffy eyes and bruised lips but he is smiling and Soobin knows everything will be fine.

_Our clumsy promises._

He finally writes it down years after that. Into the notes on his phone, because there’s no way he will stand up from where he is now.

Soobin writes it down, sitting next to Yeonjun. On the same bed he fell into his arms for the first time. In the same dorm they all came together to become something big.

The two are watching a movie on Yeonjun’s laptop, perched across their laps and Soobin writes it down, angling his phone so there’s no way the other could see, even when he rakes his neck in attempt to do so.

“What are you so secretive about, Soobin-ah?” he asks teasingly, but doesn’t fret on it, instead focusing back on the movie and leaving the leader to whatever he is doing.

The bed rustles when Taehyun moves on the top bunk, small snores are heard from Beomgyu on the other side of the room and Huening Kai is singing horrible renditions of 2000s pop songs in the shower, when Soobin puts his phone away.

He’s already close to Yeonjun, thighs and arms touching, the same heat of the laptop making the skin of their thighs sear, but he shuffles even closer, earns a chuckle and the familiar weight of an arm around his shoulder.

What movie were they watching again? Soobin can’t remember and he doesn’t care to look at the screen to do so. He ignores the voices spoken into his right ear through one of Yeonjun’s AirPods and he ignores the noises around him he can hear with his left. He ignores the world around him, because he doesn’t need it.

His world is sitting right next to him.

He’s sitting right there with his galaxy eyes, and the soft slope of his nose that Soobin wants to trace with his finger. With that hair that’s slightly too long, perfect to run his fingers through and that jawline that begs to be bitten.

Yeonjun sits there with his lips slightly parted, his tongue softly grazing over them every so often and leaving them to glisten illuminated by the laptop light and _he is right there_. Soobin feels full enough to burst. In the best way.

“You’re staring…” Yeonjun says, his voice, Soobin’s favourite sound, softly travelling through the air.

Yes, he’s staring, and he won’t stop anytime soon, because he wasted years looking away and _imagining_ this everything of Yeonjun that sits right in front of him. He will keep looking now.

Soobin does just that, lifting his head and resting it against the wall behind their backs in the same way Yeonjun is and he _looks_.

There’s a tremble in these soft lips, like Yeonjun wants to speak up but then decides against it. Then the corners of his mouth pull up slightly and Soobin follows the curve of it, up to cheeks that have lost some of their softness but are still the same ones from years ago.

He allows his gaze to travel up higher and directly meet Yeonjun’s. No turning back, not this time.

When they finally kiss, Soobin feels like a whole universe is being birthed in his chest, particles exploding and forming something bigger, so much bigger and meaningful and he _is in love_. And he agrees with his self from second grade that there is no way to describe this. That the thing he wrote down on his phone is nothing, can’t possibly begin to describe what he feels for Yeonjun.

And what Yeonjun feels for him. Because next to those soft, plush lips acquainting themselves with his own, there’s a hand sliding up to cover the side of his neck, trembling fingers brushing over his jaw to pull him even closer.

Soobin is kissing Yeonjun and their universes align, and he knows everything will be alright in the end.

Even when Huening Kai comes back from his shower and mutters a “ _fucking finally_ ” under his breath, they don’t stop. Even when the laptop clatters to the ground and Taehyun sticks his head over the side of his bunk, they don’t stop and Soobin knows that he’ll be fine. That they’ll all be fine.

_This place is our start line._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading, if you enjoyed this, please leave Kudo's and comments, they always mean a lot!!
> 
> Follow me on twt @ninchannie for shenanigans, but fair warning: I am usually a lot more nsfw.   
> My CC is also @ninchannie and I'm always happy when I get a notif from there :3
> 
> See you very soon...
> 
> ~F


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